


Return my heart, my mind, to me

by overthemoon



Series: Send Me Somewhere I Call Home [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, Parentlock, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-09
Updated: 2013-06-09
Packaged: 2017-12-14 11:23:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/836350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overthemoon/pseuds/overthemoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock comes home to find that John and Hamish no longer live in 221b.  Heartbreak ensues and events do not go as Sherlock planned.</p><p> <br/><i>The front door opens. “Hamish!” John calls, and Sherlock flinches. Hamish looks up and wipes the wetness off his face with his sleeve. “Got you one of those tomato sandwiches you -” John stands in the doorway. “-Like,” he whispers.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Return my heart, my mind, to me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Interrosand](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Interrosand/gifts).



> Thank you so much to LapOtter for the beta! You're the best. 
> 
> Interrosand requested: a future fic for Emptying the skull, because OMG how does one explain to a young Hamish W-H that his father was no dead, and in fact was gallivanting all over the planet (es to save them, but still), and they would have left 221B in the continuity of your fic
> 
> I hope you like it Sandy. [Based on this gifset](http://cassiel.co.vu/post/26439269522/)
> 
> Sherlock's thoughts are in [brackets]. Sorry if this is confusing.

Sherlock clenches his hands as he waits inside a taxi cab. London traffic sweeps past the unmoving black car; the city again ignoring cabs lurking in unusual places.

[One last deception.] Sherlock blinks; the passerby continue to stream by in unrecognizable unimportant waves.

He pulls that damn phone out and checks the texting history.

 

**From: Mrs Hudson**

Received 34 Minutes Ago

I’ve invited them over, hopefully it all goes well dear!

 

**From: Mrs Hudson**

Received 29 minutes ago

Though I wouldn’t be surprised if they were upset.

 

**From: Mrs Hudson**

Received 22 Minutes Ago

Please don’t ask me to text you again, had to get married ones to show me how to use phone.

 

**To: Mrs Hudson**

Sent 21 minutes ago

I am aware - SH

 

Sherlock puts the phone away in his pocket. He closes his eyes and runs over the simulations that he’s built countless times to keep nightmares away.

[Probability that John will smile: 43.6%. Not good enough. Will have to do.]

Hamish appears in his peripheral vision, and Sherlock turns his head. He pulls up all the mental photographs and memories that’s he’s stored and he feels stabbed as he visually measures the inches that Hamish has grown without Sherlock to observe firsthand. There’s a new pattern in his son’s gait, probably a mental adjustment due to not having to run after Sherlock anymore. Sherlock shakes his head. [Limp came back, probably. No need to chase after John the way John used to chase after me.]

Sherlock avoids looking at John Watson as his husband lets Hamish go ahead and disappears into Speedy’s.

[Now.]

Sherlock thrusts a wad of bills at the cabbie and darts out, flashing across the street and darting inside the doors of 221 Baker Street. He pauses in the hallway, breathes in, cataloguing the despicable lack of tea steam permeating the atmosphere.

As per request, Mrs Hudson is staying inside 221A for the meantime. Sherlock traces his gloved fingers over the painted over scratches in the wallpaper. [Probably was done when ~~John~~ Hamish moved out. Mrs Hudson would have need new tenants. Thank god for Mycroft’s meddling.] He curls his fingers into fists and uncurls them. [John’s habit, not mine.]

Sherlock places his palm gently on the door and pushes it open, heading upstairs. The soft thumping of his feet on the seventeen stairs matches his heartbeat. He pushes the upstairs door open, crosses his hands behind his back and strides in, looking straight ahead.

He hears a small gasp. [ _I’m sorry,_ my son.] Sherlock’s gaze is drawn to Hamish’s shocked and pained facial expression like iron filings to an electromagnet. Sherlock digs his fingernails into his gloved palm and carves a tiny bust of Hamish’s face inside his memory palace. [Gap in knowledge remains unacceptable.]

Sherlock clears his throat. The library’s subwing of apologetic burning words etched onto scrolls in his mind evaporated, leaving no trace of ink behind.

“You’re not dead,” Hamish says. He sits down on a new coffee table. [Never used for coffee anyway. Detestable name.] “Dad said you were. I saw your grave.” Hamish looks down at the floor and drops his arms loosely by his sids. “You should be. You made us watch, didn’t you?” Hamish blinks rapidly. [Crying. Chemicals. Sentiment. My Fault.]

Hamish takes a deep breath. “Why aren’t you dead?”

Sherlock taps his feet on the carpet. “I... It’s a long story, Hamish,” he says, voice low and ripe with regret. There is no appropriate formula or phrase in any language Sherlock knows to make Hamish understand that Sherlock did not tolerate three years of not-being-Sherlock-Holmes to summarize their sorrows with a pathetic _Sorry_.

“Dad will be home soon,” Hamish says. A little puddle of tear water collects in Hamish’s cupped hands. “He won’t be happy with you.”

“I know.” Sherlock swallows. He cannot think with the white pestering noise of _Hamish is hurting fix it/solve it now_ hounding his mental process. There are grey circles under his eyes that no child should ever wear. Sherlock wants to touch the jumper Hamish is wearing. Maybe it will be soft like John’s jumpers. Maybe he can relearn a modicum of sentiment so he will not be a hollow ghost hunting for shadows and enemies anymore, and so that Hamish will not cry because Sherlock Holmes doesn’t know how to solve tears.

[I never have.]

Hamish whispers, after a pause as painful as another year away, “He missed you.” Sherlock cannot compute the quiet agony on Hamish’s face and dissects the grammar instead. Past tense. Perhaps John no longer misses him, and the thought stabs him as painful as the bullet that sent John to Sherlock. Perhaps this would be tolerable if it let John be happy because Sherlock wants John Watson to be fine. He just wants it to go back to “It’s all fine” because he understood and could tolerate being alone then; he hadn’t yet lost something he could not tolerate losing.

“I missed him too, Hamish,” Sherlock says, and he wreaks havoc in the mind palace’s library searching for the litantany of sorrows that would accurately describe smoking three packets of cigarettes in one night to drive away the stabbing caused by soft drunken laughter drifting from from the next balcony over. He’d stood in the cold cradling the fags in the hollow spaces between where his warm doctor’s hands should be entwined. Sherlock strokes the backs of his gloved hands with his fingers.

[Not close enough.] He steps forward into the center of the room.

The front door opens. “Hamish!” John calls, and Sherlock flinches. Hamish looks up and wipes the wetness off his face with his sleeve. “Got you one of those tomato sandwiches you -” John stands in the doorway. “-Like,” he whispers.

Sherlock should not be breathing. “John.” John’s face of a thousand expressions wipes clean, goes blank. “I...” Sherlock’s mouth hangs open because there are no words. He closes his mouth. Sherlock cannot look at John’s not-John face so he stares at the dust accumulation on the empty bookshelves. [Level of accumulation matches three months mark. Cross referencing Mycroft’s snide anonymous emails and texts suggest that the flat has been unoccupied for over 18 months. Someone came back to clean then, probably Mrs Hudson.] In his peripheral vision he sees John crossing the flat to kneel next to Hamish.

“I don’t know why he’s not dead,” Hamish mumbles. Sherlock risks glancing back at his son; Hamish has buried his face in John’s jacket, arms wrapped tightly around John.

John stares at the top of Hamish’s head, refusing to look at Sherlock. “Shhh,” John says. “It’s okay.” Sherlock _does. not. breathe._ The smiley face he shot onto the wallpaper so many years ago is gone. The photographs on the mantlepiece are gone. The skull is gone. “Do you want to go home?”

[You are home.] Sherlock can’t physically expel those words from his throat. [I am home now.]

“John,” says Sherlock. He looks at John refusing to look at him and counts the new streaks of grey and white hair, measures the increased dark shadows carved under John’s eyes, records the new oscillation pattern of John’s tremor. “I’m not dead.”

“I can’t do this right now!” John snaps, stands up, points his finger at Sherlock and Sherlock cannot solve what has gone wrong this time. “You!” John clenches his hand, turns his head and looks out the window. “You abandoned us to go off on one of your cases, huh? Have any fun?” John turns to glare at Sherlock and Sherlock wants to fall to his knees and beg for forgiveness in a language he doesn’t know. “Go on, show off. What did you deduce this time?” John has always used sarcasm as a shield, but now it is a scalpel, cutting Sherlock’s heart to the bone.

“You’re not dead,” Sherlock says, voice trembling. Sherlock adjusts his gaze to watch Hamish clutching himself like an old teddy bear. “You’re upset and in shock and John, _I did it so that you would not die you have to understand._ ” Sherlock swallows; maybe begging is what it will take but John does not understand that Sherlock tried to do the right thing for once. “They would have tortured you and tortured Hamish until pain was the only sensation you were capable of feeling, and then hurt you some more just to demonstrate the great Sherlock Holmes is indeed capable of love and fear and _look what good that did him_.” Sherlock swings his arms and spins in frustration. “I tried to protect you! I did protect you. _I came back!_ ” [Probability that John Watson will smile: 9.1% and dropping rapidly. I have badly miscalculated.]

“YOU LEFT,” John roars. John curls his hands into fists, regret etched in the painfully new stress lines wrinkling his face. “You did left us all alone and what were we supposed to do? Wait for a postcard, oh look hey, I’m not dead, on a case be back in a couple months- You died!” John pants. “You died and you made me watch and you made Hamish watch too.” John looks away. “Why did you come back? You shouldn’t-” John closes his eyes. “Why?”

“I was trying to protect you!” Sherlock says. He remembers feeling in control when the first assassin avoided ambush and turned the gun on him instead, but now, now when faced with John Watson, his heart, he is helpless and what he tried to protect will destroy him. He holds out his hand in a futile gesture. [Please John please I tried don’t you understand you were in danger and I wanted to protect you because that’s what friends do and _I love you._ ]

John breathes out. “I can’t do this right now,” he says.

[I know I left you. Please don’t leave me too.]

“Dad?” Hamish asks. Sherlock and John both turn to stare at Hamish. “Is it really him?” Hamish glances at Sherlock before looking at John. “He looks almost the same as before... when we saw him before he was on the roof.”

Sherlock reaches out to touch John’s shoulder. John flinches away from him. “No,” he says, low, dangerous, but still lovely. “I said, I can’t do this now.” Sherlock leaves his hand hovering in John’s personal bubble.

Hamish yells at Sherlock, “Leave him alone!” Sherlock drops his hand and steps closer to John. “Leave Dad alone he’s crying leave him alone!” Sherlock stops, steps back. “Why didn’t you tell us? Why did you have to leave?”

“There were snipers,” Sherlock says. “There was no time.” Hamish’s face is still wet; the thin streaks of tears haven’t yet dried. “There wasn’t enough time and I’m sorry.” The pathetic syllables escape his mouth and Sherlock can’t measure how utterly inadequate those two words are.

“Get out,” Hamish says, pointing a finger at the door. “Leave us alone.”

“I can explain,” Sherlock says.  Desperation claws at him as he scrabbles for the right phrase that will make everything fien. “I can explain. I came back. I didn’t mean to leave you for so long but I had to make sure they were all dead and _I’m Sorry._ ”

“Sherlock, go,” John says. He looks at Sherlock with the same steel once reserved for their enemies. “I’m not having this discussion now.”

Sherlock refuses to flinch. “When can we have this discussion?” His chest won’t stop feeling hollow because his heart still beats inside an army doctor’s protective hands.

“Later.” John swallows and presses his lips firmly together. “I’m going to check on Mrs. Hudson and then we’re going _home_.” John throws the word at Sherlock, another accusation of abandonment. “Come on, Hamish.” Hamish nods and wipes his eyes with his sleeve. “Don’t bother coming back here; we don’t live here anymore.”

[I know.] Sherlock stares at the rug. [All chemical stains have been erased.] “All right,” Sherlock says. He looks at John, tracing over with eyes familiar skin he once traced with his lips and fingertips. Sherlock blinks nervously. “But when?”  [I would wait a thousand years if it mean I could come home to you.]

John shakes his head and gets up. “Oh I don’t know, you’ll text us and expect us to come running at your beck and call,” he snaps. “We don’t need your bloody protection anymore, do we?” John thuds down the stairs. [He needs some air. He just needs some air right?] Hamish pauses in the doorway.

“You mean it, right?” he asks. Sherlock viciously hates how small Hamish sounds. “You are sorry.”

Sherlock nods, deducing the hand-me-down character of Hamish’s clothes. [Repaired relationship with Harry, lost job for several months, probably due to grief.] “I do,” he says. He rubs his ring finger.

Hamish nods, eyes still accusing and unhealthily sad. “Okay.” Sherlock’s son troops down the stairs after John.

Sherlock waits inside his empty skull in 221b. [Deception removal complete. Times that John Watson smiled: zero.]

**Author's Note:**

> Comments/crying in comments/kudos are sincerely appreciated. What did you think? Everything anything just please tell me what you thought/felt?


End file.
